BOSTON (10/24/12) – Pushing forward after a most successful inaugural Women in Agribusiness Summit last month in New Orleans, host HighQuest Partners is looking to better understand the role of women in agribusiness with its upcoming study, “The Changing Demographics and Experience of Women in Agribusiness.”

With results set to be released in July 2013, HighQuest is now looking for industry participants to move forward with researching the current representation of women in agribusiness, their experience in agribusiness, and the most effective strategies for recruiting, retaining and enabling women to thrive and advance within agribusiness.

“Much evidence exists to support the numerous benefits of having a more gender-diverse workplace, including a strong positive link between the proportion of women on executive committees and corporate performance,” said Lissa Blake, director of the Women in Agribusiness Summit. “With this in-depth study, we hope to support agribusiness companies in reaching their gender-inclusion goals by provide up-to-date, cutting-edge knowledge and insight on this important topic.”

HighQuest unveiled results from a pre-conference survey at last month’s Women in Agribusiness Summit. “The feedback on the results was very enthusiastic and attendees wanted more info,” said Mary Shelman, co-chair of the summit and director of the Agribusiness Program at Harvard Business School and President of IFAMA. “Not only did we gather key demographics from this pre-survey, we were able to identify needs, concerns and motivators for women in this industry that highlighted the fact that they want ‘a seat at the table’ and a ‘voice in the discussion’ and ways to progress to that point.”

The new, comprehensive study will be designed to define these parameters further by gathering rich, qualitative data from a representative sample of 150 agribusinesses worldwide. Questions will be answered such as: How many women hold leadership positions? How does women’s representation in agribusiness compare to other business sectors? What is the experience of women in agribusiness and what challenges and concerns do women have?